During the past year, Mike Reeg has added enhancements to his “Mid Town on the Avenue” commercial center at 1702-1710 W. Colorado Avenue.

Mike and Peg Reeg stand in front of the exterior of his Mid Town on the Avenue commercial center (note sign on wall behind them) that Mike owns and recently remodeled at the northwest corner of Colorado and 17th Street. Her hair salon is the corner unit.

Westside Pioneer photo

Most obvious to passersby are the roofline changes - replacing the peak roofs on 1702-1704 (which is actually an individual building) to create a Spanish Colonial façade throughout - and installing curved windows along the east wall next to 17th Street. All the center's buildings now have Spanish-tile awnings, too.
The 7,500-square-foot complex facing onto the avenue has six storefronts. Two units are in back.
The buildings are more than 50 years old, Reeg said. They once had different looks, with the peak roofs on 1702-1704 contrasting with the flat roofs on 1706-1710.
The work continues the changes that started with Reeg's major renovation of the property in 2007. That work included structural and drainage upgrades and even air conditioning for his tenants.
He'd bought the 1702 property in 1996 for his wife Peg's hairdressing salon.
He added 1706-1710 in 2006, even though, as he put it, “they were literally falling down.”
Overall, he estimated he's spent more than half a million dollars on the center's upgrades.

How the center - formerly two buildings - looked after Mike bought the second set (the flat-roofed buildings at left (street numbers 1706-1710 W. Colorado) in 2006. "They were literally falling down," he recalled. Reeg did a major renovation on the entire property a year later, including
drainage and structural work.

Courtesy of Mike Reeg

He typically doesn't fixate on restoration that's accurate, down to every historical detail, but if he sees designs or details he likes, even just in a surrounding neighborhood, he looks for compatible ways to work it in. That's how the Spanish Colonial style took shape.
“I like to buy old stuff and fix it up,” summarized Reeg, who also owns Tri Star Masonry. And, in so doing, “I wanted to keep the character of the Westside.”
Reeg said he named the center Mid Town on the Avenue because it's “halfway between the downtown and Old Colorado City.”